


Necessity

by morethanprinceofcats



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Child Death, Codependency, F/M, Sex but not particularly graphic, dryden sucks thanks for coming to my TED talk, the power dynamics seem straightforward but it turns out... they are not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 15:19:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morethanprinceofcats/pseuds/morethanprinceofcats
Summary: "Of course you had a handle on things.  But I know you.  You have no secrets from me."Try me, she thought, lightyears away, in an untouchable dream.[The same events from 'Need', from Qi'ra's perspective.  Shockingly, their recollections diverge.]





	Necessity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



> A sequel of sorts to Need. (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18936571)

The sun had dipped below the horizon and left a spill of violent orange in the inky sky before Dryden's self-congratulatory dinner ended, and Qi'ra, smiling wearily, bid him a good night, and disembarked from the ship.  A blip away, in a tarnished speeder - she thought it had been blue once, she thought there were flecks of paint on the scratches - and she was there.  Swathed in scarves and a long coat, hair hidden, eyes black pools beneath a hood.  She parked in the underground lot and took the dim elevator to her room.  

 

When she flicked the light on, she thought she might say, "I'm home," to no one in particular.  She thought about it, but she didn't.  This was just some room.  They might not even stay the week in Vandor.  


Still, for now it was her own place, and at a distance, however short, from where  _First Light_  glided in the night sky.  That counted for something. Qi'ra had been raised to count her blessings, and she wasn't one to throw away a lesson.

 

Fate, the Force, life, whatever you called it had been generous crafting Dryden Vos; he'd received many blessings.  He was handsome and brilliant, with good taste and a mind for strategy and finance, so whatever money he'd gotten his hands on he could multiply, and quickly. But many people were handsome and brilliant, and a deft hand with money or politics can be taught.  Dryden's most valuable gift was his intuitive grasp of the inner workings of the soul.  How quickly he could find need, and transform it into fulfillment - sorrow, and turn it into happiness.  In his hands, bone-deep loneliness became the exquisite, earth-shattering relief that one is finally welcome and understood. 

 

Qi'ra was neither the first or the most recent person to make the assumption that meant he felt things very deeply.  But whatever designed him went back over the blueprint and smudged his heart out of existence.  Behind his mask of sincerity and kindness there was an eraser smear of a sentient lifeform.  But a better mimic than most.

 

By the time Qi'ra had learned to look into his eyes and see nothing there, it was a little too late to withdraw.  Here, she thought, stepping into the shower, acerbic white, smelling of bleach, was a blessing.  In the time she'd spent under his wing truly believing in the fulfillment, the happiness he gave her, he'd taught her very well.  And she didn't suppose she'd have been able to learn so very well, if she'd felt as truly alone as she'd really been.  Besides, there had been no window in which she could have escaped from him, the man who kept her in bondage, bought and paid for her, groomed her into lieutenant material, into his own creature.  Better that she didn't regret all of it.

 

There was, in fact, one thing Qi'ra did not regret, one gladness untouched by the Crimson Dawn.  She could while away a dismal afternoon turning that one over in her head; even Dryden could not touch it.  Sluicing water through her hair, Qi'ra hoped that after the shower she could go there.  But she couldn't.  There had never been any blood, and the sweat on her palms had been washed away hours ago... But Qi'ra was still unclean.  She scrubbed her body til she flushed raw pink, but looking down at her trembling hands, all she could see was red.

 

_Cry_ , she thought numbly.  _Get it over with.  Cry, and sleep._  Those weren't unusual evening plans for a lieutenant in a crime syndicate.  But the days when crying came easy were behind her now.  You had to learn to push some things under your tongue, if you didn't want to vomit.   _That_ was a blessing.  If she still cried easy, she wouldn't have been able to do what she'd done today.  A blessing... for whom?  Not for...  _Oh, gods_....

 

And not for Qi'ra, whose hands were red.

 

A blessing for someone else.

 

.

 

Thrum of an expensive, near silent engine in another wise cheap speeder.  Stars bleary in the sky, winking on and off in an indifferent galaxy.  No moon visible tonight, ominous; Vandor had two moons.  They must have been veiled in the clouds.  Qi'ra could sympathize.  She knew all about hiding your face.

 

She thumbed through a pocketbook of bad memories, only some of them weren't all that bad.  There was a shiny, hopeful glimmer in a bad memory sometimes, at the end. The first time she'd taken a life.  Grim and awful, and now it made her heart ache to have that innocence back.  Imagine thinking one execution, and that of a contemptible criminal who'd doublecrossed and killed to make a profit, to be the death of one's soul.  She even smiled to think about it.

 

A simple request, a hand cupping her face and lifting her chin.  _"I know you_ can _do it.  But now I need you to tell me that you_ will _."_

 

_"I'm ready."_

_"I know you are.  Now show me."_

 

He'd poured drinks after; said, "shall we toast?"  When had the sense of accomplishment worn off?   She'd found herself retreating early on to sob in her bed, appreciating the privacy of her bunk, having graduated to a tiny slot in the wall instead of the dormitory with the other slaves. But then Dryden had summoned her. 

 

_"You left early. Are you well?"_  Hand on her forehead, his eyes beseeched her.  It was the anticipation of disappointment coming into his expression that had unraveled her again.  She couldn't bring herself to face him as she sobbed that she'd failed him.  She couldn't do it. He would have to sell her, send her away.

 

He'd talked her around, of course, or she'd be somewhere else now.  And the man today, and his family, they might still be dead, but it would be someone else carrying their ghosts.  Dryden always followed a script, she'd come to see: a wave crests, then crashes. There was no way to change the script.  She just had to try and make the play a little longer.  Sometimes, however, it was Qi'ra who read the lines, and Dryden the shore to welcome her.    Even now, she couldn't bring herself to doubt the sincerity of his comfort.  If it was a self-deception, it was a necessary one. Another blessing.

 

.

 

His enforcers did not let her up so much as she might as well have been invisible to them.  She'd never even had to inform them Dryden had given her the passcodes to his chambers; either they had already known or Dryden trusted those he gave them so well that they had been trained never to inquire, but they had never once stopped her.  When the elevator arrived at his floor, there was another code to be punched in before the doors would even open.  Get it wrong, and the elevator gassed you, and the enforcers would see to it that you were interrogated and disposed of.  So she heard.  It had never come to that.

 

The doors opened on a dark hallway, with a haunting echo of something jazzy unfurling in the air; the dim red and golden light at the end of the carpeted hallway said he was awake, and his door was open.  That rattled her nerves more than she could say, on a visceral, nonsensical level.  Why should it matter to her now that she was expected? She thought she had been perfect at dinner.  She'd made such good conversation, even sharing a risky inside joke with Dryden by referencing the political dispute that she'd just assassinated over, to the cluelessness of his guests. The glint in his eye when he'd met hers, like he'd been impressed, she'd returned with a confident nod.  What had been the tell?  

 

Dryden was pouring a glass of wine when she found the doorway, his cape on the bed, his tie merely loosened.  Qi'ra leaned against the door, rapped her knuckles on it to announce herself, and stepped out of her heels as she awaited his invitation. What would it be like, she wondered, to run down the hallway and into his arms without thinking through every step?  And when, she wondered, would she stop asking herself these things?

 

"Qi'ra," he said, with warmth, before even turning to see her. She wondered, fleetingly, if anyone else  _did_  have his passcodes.  It was the kind of nervous thought a troubled mind produced, and banished, when she responded, preprogrammed and automatic, to the lazy flick of his hand.  When she'd come close enough, that hand had tucked itself at the base of her neck and guided her the rest of the way towards him.  Dryden was not a man afraid to get his hands dirty, speaking figuratively, and more literally that one might guess.  He liked to force the shape of a situation personally.  Sometimes he touched her too blatantly in company, and an attention-starved crime lord always wanted company, and pretended - she assumed he pretended - to not notice the way shame suffused her face and stuttered her breathing.  Was it shame now that made her flush?

 

Dryden bent his arm, bringing her into the crook of his elbow, at the same moment as he lifted the glass to his lips, tilted his head back to drink.  Qi'ra stiffened, resisted; resigned herself; caught herself holding her breath; then sank, wearily, into the half-moon embrace, turned her head, and found the tender inside of his wrist with a sigh.  She lifted her hand to his, cradled it, and kissed his palm.  She could feel the smile on his lips when his fingers caressed her cheek.

 

"And there you have it," he said, with good-humored satisfaction.  "All the while you ate dinner, I thought I saw something eating you."

 

He downed the wine, all but the last swallow, which he pressed into her hand. She accepted it with a sheepish smile, drank it, and had no choice but to drink again when he poured her more.  

 

"You're good," she said wryly.  She was on thin ice with that; Dryden knew he was good, knew it well enough that it could insult him to say so little on the subject.  "How could you tell?  I thought I had a handle on things."

 

"Qi'ra, Qi'ra," he said, his fingers rubbing her collarbone.  She thought briefly that she should have changed into casual businesswear before she left, but she'd thrown the coat on over a pair of trousers and the flimsy, sleeveless shift she slept in.  But perhaps vulnerability was its own offence.  She'd relied on that tactic for years, and it hadn't failed yet - show your neck to the alpha for him to bite, so he doesn't have to rip your throat out.  "Of course you had a handle on things.  But I know you.  You have no secrets from me."

 

_Try me_ , she thought, lightyears away, in an untouchable dream.  But she said nothing, and shyly sipped her wine, toyed with her hair, fidgeted.  After the appearance of an attempt to drink, she moved to lower the glass to his table again, but he touched her on the wrist.

 

"It will help," he said, firmly.  With her stationary smile, Qi'ra drank.  She felt like she was the one in the glass, sliding down his throat.  In fact, she thought, as she drained it, she thought she saw him swallow.  He dabbed at her lips as he took the empty glass, and then he patted his tie.  Qi'ra obliged. It was good to take her eyes off his, even as she felt, distinctly, his stare.  A bare back, a collarbone, a curve could distract Dryden, but only for a moment. It was your soul he hungered for.  She felt him searching her eyes for hers as she kept her own fixed on his throat; he was a distraction of his own, and she needed one.  He took the tie from her hand and tossed it aside, then slid his hands down her shoulders, up them again, and squeezed.

 

She thought she'd taken a minute to compose herself, but when she looked at him again, there was no calculation in his face.  Only the most sincere concern.  

 

"Do you know you're shaking?" he said. "Perhaps I should have skipped the wine."

 

When she made to laugh it off, the trembling her voice caught even her own attention.  The laugh was a failure, a throaty sob.  He pulled her, swaying, closer.

 

"Darling, what is it?"

 

How to deny it? Furthermore, what had she expected?  To wryly chat work at this hour?  No, she knew what she'd come for and so did he: music playing, soft and unobtrusive; wine, the light on, door open at the end of the hall. But this part, this part...

 

"Nothing," she whispered.

 

"Nonsense," said Dryden, caressing her chin, but there was no laughter in his eyes.  She tried to look away, and then she didn't.  Possibly she couldn't.  And most probably, she didn't really want to.  

 

What Dryden wanted from this encounter, she could only guess at.  And she'd tear it to pieces later, trying to figure that out, to find a way to use it to her advantage.  The principles of logic dictate that the simplest explanation is also the likeliest.  And the experience of life, in all its relentless grind and grime, shows us nothing is ever simple.  The logical conclusion was that he sniffed out her emotional failings because if he could soothe them away, then she wouldn't have them anymore, and would be more useful to him.  So, like payrolls and security measures, it was a necessary business expenditure.  

 

Slowly, Qi'ra unfurled, like a bank note ready to be counted.

 

"The mother," she said slowly, through a smile and though tears.  Kamagata had one charge, just one: to make a specific ruling in favor of Crimson Dawn.  He had taken their bribes for a year now, and yet, somehow, his office made highly inconvenient decisions. The solution had been Qi'ra's own idea.  A man might be persuaded, with money in his bank account already, that he can have it both ways.  But a man who comes home and finds his wife and children gone?  He knows there is only one way now, and he'd have to be a fool not to take it.

 

The blaster had been sweaty in Qi'ra's hand when the ruling came through; Dryden had upturned a table and stormed away from the scene, mind already weeks in the future, thinking about how to circumvent this, all the money sunk into it, all of the wheels coming to a halt with a squeal.  Only Qi'ra's mind on the now.   _No,_  she remembered.   _No_.  And Madam Kamagata had whimpered and sank to the floor, and Dryden's moody eyes had jumped up in annoyance; and the children, antsy and scared, had been silent, but the younger of them, he'd asked, "Mummy?"

 

She'd steeled herself and lifted the gun.  

 

"The way she screamed, when I did the little one," said Qi'ra, with dissonant laughter. Dryden's thumb made sweet, wet circles over her cheekbone. "Funny; I thought she'd be silent. Go into shock, I expected.  I never do know how they'll react.  I'm not--"

 

Qi'ra struggled for the words.  _I'm not as smart as you_ , she'd been planning to say.  But also true were  _heartless, cruel, cunning, ruthless_.

 

Relief had flooded her when Dryden lifted his hand, tersely, to stop her.  "Wait."

 

And then he'd brought up the call screen.

 

"This is Kamagata's own handiwork, and he is going to  _watch_."

 

The daughter  _had_  gone silent, even as her mother started to scream, and, through the static, her father started to blubber and beg.  Dryden had recovered his temper from the table incident.  "Do you understand now?  We asked so very little of you, Kamagata. What was it worth to you?  A principle?  A lofty idea?"

 

He had starts and stops of incoherent, desperate ideas now... ways he could spy on the council for them, ways he could corrupt the democratic process in the future in their favor.  Qi'ra recalled the nauseated sinking of her heart into her soiling stomach.  Some of them, maybe she could have twisted to Dryden's approval, and let the family off with light injuries - a strategic scarring, at worst - if Kamagata had been willing to bend to them before his youngest child was murdered.  But they had only one way to go from here.  With one dead, they all had to go, or Kamagata would have invoked a higher authority as soon as they were out of earshot.  

 

Dryden snapped his fingers and pointed.  "You there.  Little one. What is your name?"

 

The mother clung to her last remaining child in desolation.  Stony-faced, the girl, ten or about, stared unflinching at Dryden and did not answer; her mother gave her name as Tesla.  

 

"Tesla Kamagata.  What was your brother's name?"

 

When her mother wailed, Tesla answered for her.  "Yosef."

 

"Tesla," Dryden said, eye contact hard and unyielding, without a hint of mortal feeling, as they moved from the child to the pixelated holograph of the father.  "Tesla, I do believe your father loves you more than he did Yosef.  You see, how you can put a price on love?  He bargained for you.  He didn't bargain for your brother."

 

Dryden looked at  _her_  now, gestured with a nod of his head. Qi'ra did not flinch either. The trouble was, this time the mother tried to get in the way. Only then did the child squirm and tear up. 

 

Such a lot of noise, Qi'ra didn't think it would ever end, even when she'd shot them both; the sound rang in her ears after, even when Dryden ended the call shortly after. A nod to his enforcers, and they left in a group, to see to Kamagata themselves; three remained behind, to carry the bodies out.  Qi'ra did not know what they did with them.  Incinerated them, she supposed.  

 

Only her rapid heartrate told her she had a heart at all.  But her voice was light as she lay her blaster down and stretched her neck til it cracked.

 

"I wonder if Kamagata will run for his life, or if he'll give up on living, and wait for them."

 

"Oh, he'll run," Dryden had said moodily, taking her blaster hand in both of his and kissing her on the fingers. She felt too numb to feel it, as though her hand had fallen asleep.  "If he cared about them  _that_  much, the bill would have been ours."

 

"Mm," Qi'ra'd said.  "I'm sure you're right."

 

A darkened bedroom, illuminated with the rusty golden glow of lamplight filtered through a tryena shell twice the size of a grown man's head, blinking sleepily in and out of existence.  Qi'ra realized Dryden's thumb was wet with her tears.

 

"Is it the contrast of it," he asked her, inquisitive and empathetic.  "The sight of the mother shielding her daughter, when your own mother shoved you away?"

 

The idea pierced her heart; she stumbled, he caught her.  The very fact that it might be truth, and it was that old wound that agitated her now, and no lingering mortality at all, seemed almost too gruesome to bear; but if nothing else, the notion that, to Dryden, the murder of children was common enough that he would seek out a different explanation for her agony, was an insurmountable object of horror.  And yet it was Dryden supporting her now, Dryden pressing her against him as she sobbed, Dryden rocking her where she stood.  He ran his fingers through her hair and murmured things in so low and soothing a voice she scarcely heard him at all.  "Oh, my dear," he said, and, "let me take care of you," and "there, there," and, "I'm here."

 

Innocent children had died, all Qi'ra's fault.  Kamagata had made a foolish decision, but the notion had been hers, and her was the hand that pulled the trigger.  She had never hurt a child before.  It seemed that, on top of everything else, the child she'd killed tonight was a little scrumrat from Corellia, dreaming of a way out, with no steel-tipped boots, no cattle prods, no bruises in the morning, no pinching fingers at night.  

 

There was no way out.  There was only the way.

 

She felt like a basin of water, being emptied drop by drop.  When her tears slowed to a trickle, Dryden dried her eyes with the press of his thumb, and imparted a secret.

 

"That you even care proves you're still a good woman," he said, and when she shook her head, gripped the back of her neck to stop her.  "But the fact that you could do it anyway proves how strong you are.  I need that, Qi'ra.  Any weak person can be cruel, it costs them nothing.  But I need you to be.  Because I know that if you do it, then it is only because it was necessary."

 

Qi'ra had a stone wall around her heart.  When you live among thieves and criminals, you learn to lock up your valuables.  She pictured her tears falling, unrelentingly, on the same brick in the wall. Water takes the shape of any container you put it in; place a stone in the way, the water yields first.  But one steady drip can erode stone over time.  

 

She fumbled for his other hand and pressed it over her racing heart.  With his eyes on hers, she could see his face slacken, almost imperceptibly; his eyes grew so briefly so wide, so vulnerable.  Was he not made of stone after all? He pulled her close once more, hugging her to his chest, and kissed the top of her head. In answer, she pressed kisses to his chest, up his neck.  He groaned, almost in reluctance, even as he pulled her to the bed.

 

There was one thing he had to know, one thing she had to unburden herself of, even while his hands were on her - or especially then.  Dryden had to shoulder his share of the guilt.   Surely he could do that much for her.  Dryden was so generous, especially when it cost him nothing.

 

"I did it for you," she insisted.  She trusted in Dryden's gift for perusing a person the way he did one of his priceless little antiques, bidding him read it in her eyes.  "I mean it. I'd do  _anything_  for you, Dryden..."

 

He touched her lips.  She heard his breath catch. Her heartbeat stopped with it.

 

"I know," he said gently.

 

Qi'ra kissed his hand. Startled, he opened his fingers wide, exposing the whole palm; she kissed that.  She kissed his mouth and he gasped, a muted, almost musical note.  And said her name as he gulped down air: a plea.  "Qi'ra..."

 

Difficult to shrug out of the trousers when Dryden clutched at her so needily, but a necessity. How sweet his shyness was after waging such an extensive uphill battle, letting him rip her walls apart.  But she had to do it, or his own would never fall. "Say my name," she said breathlessly.  "Ask for me."

 

"Oh, Qi'ra, please..."

 

He buried his face in her shift and clawed at her back.  Qi'ra gripped the bedsheets behind her and arched into it.  It was a century of scratches and moaning later, of dripping water eroding stone, unlocking walled off gardens, before she caught his face in her hand and planted kisses over his cheek. The marks on his face were fever-hot to the touch, and she followed them with her lips.  He'd get so dazed like this, she was never certain if she'd gone too far, or if he had.  "Dryden," she murmured, checking in, brushing her thumb over his temple.  His hand bunched in her hair, and yanking to expose her throat, he kissed her back.  She calculated the days it would be before she could wear one of those dresses he liked again.  She urged him on, adding time to her sentence.  "Oh, Dryden," she cried, and again more sharply, when adjusting her place in his lap gave her a sudden sweet twinge.  "Let me have you.  Please.  Let me have you tonight."

 

His breathing was labored, so much so she almost stopped herself, but he was kissing her again, and then she understood perfectly why.

 

"Anything you want. Anything you want, Qi'ra, you have only to say..."

 

_Want?_  she thought, from a dark corner of her mind, where that was hysterically funny.   _You don't_ have _anything I want._

 

"You," she said instead.  "I want you," she said, and her moan gave truth to the lie, and reason for him to assent.  Perhaps in some base, animalistic way, it was true - or else in some way sick and cerebral.  But once you got that far in, once you pondered the semantics of it, the word for it wasn't  _want_ anymore.

 

.

 

"Do you remember the names of those children?" 

 

"Mm, not really, no."

 

Dryden traced his thumb over her back, hitting every vertebrate deliberately, making her squirm.  

 

"Though I could find out, if you must know."

 

"That's all right. I was only thinking... it would only be proper... We could name something after them."

 

"Qi'ra," he laughed.  His arm scooped around her back and pulled her up for a kiss on her damp forehead.  A spontaneous gesture of control was not unusual, but disconcertingly enough, she thought it might have been meant in affection.  Whatever warmth that inspired in her died in her throat when he spoke again.  "There will be other children, you know."

 

"Right," said Qi'ra.  "Of course."

 

He took in her measured ease, her well-maintained steadiness of breath, and weighed them, the consummate investor, who knows the value of everything.  His hand fell gently on the back of her head.

 

"And I'll be here," he said, low, and urgently, "when there are."

 

Qi'ra kissed him, and deepened the kiss when he seemed as though he might pull away, so that he couldn't see her face.  When she was ready, she smiled.

 

"Good," she said, her heart safe.  "You'll have to be."


End file.
